Episode 056: Ron Hansen

Ron Hansen is the author of ten works of fiction and a collection of essays. He is particularly known for his meticulous examinations of religious experience, and of the lives of historical figures. Among his best known books are the novels Desperadoes; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Mariette in Ecstasy; Atticus, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner; the short story collection Nebraska; and his latest novel, A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion. Hansen is presently the Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses in writing and literature.  He is also an ordained deacon of the Catholic Church.

Hansen read from his work on September 22, 2011, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

Episode 055: Laura Furman

Writer and editor Laura Furman was born in New York and educated at Hunter College High School and Bennington College. For many years, she taught in the English Department of the University of Texas at Austin, where she was Susan Taylor McDaniel Regents Professor of Creative Writing. While at UT Austin, she founded the literary journal American Short Fiction.  Her first story appeared in The New Yorker in 1976, and since then fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Southwest Review, Ploughshares,  Mademoiselle, Preservation, Mirabella, and House & Garden, among others. Her books include four collections of short stories, two novels, and a memoir, and she is the ninth series editor of The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, published annually by Anchor Books. Each year, she picks the twenty winning stories and writes an introduction for the volume.  Her new book is The Mother Who Stayed: Stories.

Furman read from her work on April 21, 2011, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

Episode 047: Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is the author of six books of fiction, including the story collections Almost No Memory, Varieties of Disturbance, and Collected Stories, and a novel, The End of the Story; she has also published a number of chapbooks and a large body of French translations, most notably Proust’s Swann’s Way and, just this year, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. She is a Macarthur Fellow, has won a Whiting Award, and was nominated for the National Book Award and Pen/Hemingway Award.  She teaches writing at SUNY Albany, where she is also Writer-In-Residence.

Davis read from her work on September 30, 2010, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.